


As a River to the Sea

by liriodendron



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 15:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liriodendron/pseuds/liriodendron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"River Song gets bored. Even in the biggest library in the universe. Even with a lavish digital existence complete with a home and children and any version of the Doctor she cares to contemplate, River Song still gets bored."</p><p>Includes events from "The Name of the Doctor" and episodes prior to that. References, obliquely, to "The Day of the Doctor"</p>
            </blockquote>





	As a River to the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This my first attempt at Doctor Who fanfic! I normally stick to Sherlock but this one just wouldn't leave me alone!

 

**"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from where the rivers come, there they return again. " -Ecclesiastes 1:7  
**

 

River Song gets bored. Even in the biggest library in the universe. Even with a lavish digital existence complete with a home and children and any version of the Doctor she cares to contemplate, River Song still gets bored.

 Had he really expected this to do her for all of eternity? Of course it was the best he could manage under the circumstances and a great improvement on the alternative. The utopian existence wasn't completely awful, and indulging in the make-believe was rather like going on holiday.

It's pleasant enough for a time, but had anything about her suggested remotely to either the Doctor or the supercomputer that she might be content to spend endless centuries mothering ageless children in some imaginary south England suburb? In her previous life she'd hardly been able to confine herself with a single planet for long. Never mind a single time period. Her companions do not seem to be having the same problems, to a one happily accepting the false reality, blissful and at peace. She wish she could say she envies them.

She leaves the fantasy world without regret. The others would care for the children, two phantom and one real, and they'd all be the better for it. River wants to explore. She is, after all, an archaeologist. For a while, wandering the data pathways of the vast computer and the millions upon millions of books stored there, so many previously lost to all knowledge, is a thrill. But it's fast and easy to absorb data in this form and soon she has read all she cares to read. And River Song is still bored.

It's lucky, then, that she still sleeps. She probably doesn't need to, but even incorporeated it's hard to break the habit. It's a rather refreshing reminder that some part of her is still a person, not just data, not just a figment. And when she sleeps, she dreams. As she has all her life, she dreams about the Doctor. Not about the battles they've fought or the trouble they've gotten into. She dreams about the trips taken, just the two of them, the ones where he whisks her away and shows her some wonder with the air of a young man presenting a precious piece of jewelry in a velvet box. And she dreams about the trips never to be taken.

It is a great surprise to her to be suddenly pulled from one such dream and find herself relatively solid and in the middle of what appears to be 19th Century tea party.


End file.
